


Way Down We Go

by Cuda (Scylla)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comforting Castiel (Supernatural), Communication, Dean Winchester is Missing, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, First Kiss, Forehead Kisses, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sam Winchester Whump, Season/Series 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 12:25:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18094271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scylla/pseuds/Cuda
Summary: The endless search for Dean leaves Sam a battered wreck. Castiel - in typical fashion - gives more than he ought. It's in unscripted moments like these when revelations come; when exhaustion and pain seeks a partner.





	Way Down We Go

**Author's Note:**

> Put ["Way Down We Go" by Kaleo](https://listenonrepeat.com/?v=UzXuQbcp8Yc#Way_Down_We_Go___Kaleo__with_Lyrics__) on repeat before starting this fic. It inspired the tone.

Bruises blossomed on Sam's skin in a red-violet lacework.

He'd chased a lead straight into chaos, again. And again, here Castiel found himself, stealing a few private moments with Sam after he'd been beaten bloody.

"These clash," Castiel said, touching the worst on Sam's forearm gently with a pad of cotton soaked in witch hazel, "the last set's green. It's not a good look."

Sam's shoulders jumped once. He huffed a shoddy stencil of a laugh for his one-angel audience. Because it was expected. Probably because he thought it would be melodramatic and telling if he didn't perform. As if his thousand-yard stare wasn't telling enough.

"I'll let the vamps know," Sam said, "you think two weeks is long enough before they can rough me up again?"

"It's a start. I don't understand much about human fashion, but yellow and purple are complementary colors."

Sam gave another empty chuckle. He turned his head away from Castiel; from the bare arm stretched out beneath Castiel's hands. In a breath, Sam burrowed into his own thoughts. He vanished inside himself, so deep that he didn't even react to the brush of fingers on his raw, red bracelet of rope burns. Castiel could have been patching up a test dummy.

It wasn't the first time. It wouldn't be the last.

Frustration and fear cinched up the knots in Castiel's neck. "You could try letting someone else get roughed up, for once," he said.

There was no response. He supposed he could have gotten angry; could have put some snap behind the words. Anger always brought Sam back.

Castiel sighed, turned Sam's hand over on the table, and picked up the antibiotic spray.

Let him rest. Let him be away a while. Sam knew enough anger.

While he worked, Castiel thought of encouraging things to say. That they'd find Dean. That they'd drag Michael out of him if they had to do it one bloody feather at a time. But they needed Sam whole when that fight came down. Castiel knew that, sure as he knew the pulse of his Grace, hammering its Viennese waltz under his vessel's skin. Nobody could free Dean; could push the fight into Dean's veins, without Sam. Castiel desperately wanted to take that burden from him. They demanded too much of each other, these boys. Too much sacrifice, too much pain, too much loyalty, too much strength. Nobody should be anyone's only solution. It was breaking them, fissure by fissure, as the years wore on and the days grew steadily darker.

Castiel knew he'd fail on his own, if he tried to lift that burden. So he'd help Sam, Father forgive him; he couldn't help himself. But his love for the Winchesters - together and separately - looked such a sallow thing by comparison. A pale, chilly moon to their burning sun.

"Cas," Sam said, "hey, stop."

The battered skin under Castiel's fingertips was clean. All traces of the vampires' abuse vanished.

"Save your mojo for the ones who really need it," Sam added, reaching for Castiel's shoulder, "take a break, Cas. I'll be fine."

Castiel felt the drain of what he'd done. He fainted forward, slumping with his forehead in his palm. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"It's really not."

"Cas," Sam began, and the hand on Castiel's shoulder squeezed. "Come on, man, don't run yourself ragged. I need you."

An arc of power jumped from the words, bright as a spell. They snapped Castiel's focus up, away from his dismal limitations and towards the warm voice at his side. He tipped his head, looking up at Sam with one eye.

Sam looked back at him. Saw him. The grief stood out in the lean shadows of his face. He looked the proper tragic hero; pared down to the essential suffering and resolve. But he saw Castiel now, with none of the distance before. And Castiel leaned into it, hungry for that quiet attention. For a moment away from riding this empty orbit.

The truth was there in Sam's face, parallel to the grief but not a part of it. Something in the words woke him, too - an accident, judging by the shock and fear lining his expression.

Even here, even now, Sam expected denial.

As the humans were wont to say: fuck that.

Castiel moved into Sam, deliberate for the seconds it took to reach him. Exhaustion dragged at him, but he trusted he'd poured enough of himself into the arms that reached out.

Sam shoved the table away, pushing up from his chair to meet Castiel halfway. Castiel felt the breadth of the palm at his back, how the fingers curled in a tremoring fist around a handful of his shirt.

He did what he'd never dared. He took Sam's face in his hand, gentle on the hard lines of sorrow.

Sam wrapped around him, breath and body shivering. His cheek pressed into Castiel's palm. Little by little, the earthquake under Sam's skin quieted.

It would have been enough to give Sam this. Enough to feel him relax and know he'd felt what Castiel offered. But Sam kissed his forehead, hands coming up to cup his face. Castiel raised his head, leaning into the kiss until Sam withdrew. A hunger yawned open in him, aching and empty. He kept right on leaning, closing his eyes against the cold clench of loneliness.

He felt the wash of Sam's breath, warm on his cheek. Then the soft, exploratory press of lips on his.

Oh.

Fresh emotions, new and familiar, rolled through him. Castiel wanted Sam, felt the yearning for him swell. He caught the nape of Sam's neck and deepened the kiss, offering the assurance of his body, whispering the permission that Sam waited for. A soft 'yes,' caught between a hiss and a moan, drawn from his darkest hopes and secrets. He'd allowed himself these thoughts in guilty moments of loneliness.

Kisses intensified, grew hungrier as palms and fingertips traced humming lines into skin. Sam lifted Castiel onto the table he'd pushed aside, bent over him and leaned into his mouth. Castiel felt the hunger surging in Sam, the way Sam's hands tightened on his hips.

"It's all right. I want you," he breathed.

The confession of Castiel's desire made Sam's breath hitch. Castiel felt it, with a surge of arousal and a satisfaction that was certainly sinful. Oh, he wanted to do that again.

"You get thrown around enough," Sam protested.

"You don't have to—"

"I want to."

They sat with the aftermath of that a moment, breathing together, waiting for the words to break the spell.

It held. By a miracle, it held.

Castiel took him to bed. He wasn't certain Sam would go, and prepared himself for the denial if it came. The lack of refusal might have been worrisome, honestly, had Sam not been so deeply with him. He undressed them slowly, taking turns, letting his hands ride Castiel's as they unbuttoned his shirt and opened his belt. He drank in Castiel's kisses and spilled kisses on skin in turn. He was pliant and firm by rounds, rolling over Castiel like waves. Like a man determined to taste everything.

Like a man—

"Sam," Castiel said, withdrawing to look down at him, "this is real."

Sam went still. His chest flushed; eyes swerved Castiel's. "Yeah."

"I'm real, too," Castiel continued, "and so is the fact that I want you."

There was that little hitch of breath, again. Honestly, Castiel needed penance for his greedy pride.

"We can talk about this later. I just—" Sam's eyes found a new, non-Castiel vector to study, "I want you to know I don't expect anything. After—"

"After?"

"Yeah? You're an angel. And I'm," his hands flopped at his sides, falling away from Castiel's back as he gestured to himself. Castiel resisted the urge to put them right back where they'd been.

"Someone dear to me," Castiel said, ending the sentence when Sam trailed off, "who is in pain. And whose companionship I've missed."

Sam snorted. "I'm right here. You don't have to sleep with me for that."

Pushing himself up on one elbow, Castiel kissed the skin above Sam's heart. "I'm aware," he replied, "This isn't a time to make promises. But if you're amenable, I would like it to be a beginning."

At last, Sam's eyes found Castiel. Saw him. No pretense, no distance. The grim, hopeless mess of him lay open before him, raw and trusting. "I don't know how this is gonna work, Cas."

Castiel felt the moment slipping away, and lunged after it. "Does it matter? The certainty?"

There wasn't much certainty to share, these days. Castiel remembered when certainty and purpose were evergreen. He missed the comfort of it. But uncertainty left open the doors for moments like this - an untasted future where the world survived. And where Sam Winchester accepted his love and his comfort and offered it back to him. The Castiel of the past, with all his knowledge of the future, could never have fathomed this.

Sam pulled Castiel down against his chest and kissed him, deep and hungry once more.

"I guess we'll figure it out. Because I want you too, Cas," Sam said, and Castiel's penance was the way the words set him afire.

"Then have me," Castiel whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for the sastiel community on Twitter and Tumblr, whose enthusiasm and joy pulled this tired old weirdo out of her funk. Thank you.


End file.
